Blood of the Innocents by Chris Collett Read Free Book Online

anyway and has turned his frustration on the school. According to Fakhra he’s also religious fanatic and “a bit of a nutter”. The consensus is that he was the one who damaged Akram’s car.’
    ‘Did you get a name and address?’
    ‘Fakhra was reluctant. She said she’d want to speak to Mrs Akram first. They don’t want to make more trouble for this man’s family. I think she already felt she’d said too much.’
    ‘All we’d want to do is eliminate him from the enquiry.’
    Millie wafted the letter in mid-air. ‘In the meantime, how seriously do we take this?’
    ‘It’s hard to say. After the quote, it all gets a bit vague, so I wouldn’t want to automatically jump to any conclusions. And it’s not much of a lead. It could have been written by anyone with access to a PC.’
    ‘Even Mr Akram.’
    ‘That had crossed my mind.’
    ‘You didn’t immediately warm to him, did you?’ Millie said.
    ‘That obvious? I agree with you that his reactions weren’t quite right, anger seemed to outweigh anxiety.’
    ‘It’s not always an indicator. People can be very good at covering their feelings, can’t they? His wife is clearly not coping, so he may feel it’s important to try and appear in control, even though he’s not.’
    ‘I felt it was more than that. I thought he seemed annoyed with her.’
    ‘She’d been left in charge.’
    ‘But that shouldn’t make her wholly responsible. There seemed to be some blaming going on.’
    Millie didn’t seem convinced. She turned her attention back to the letter. ‘But if this is a genuine threat we might be looking at abduction.’
    ‘Could be. Akram was quick to suggest that too.’
    ‘Wouldn’t we expect a ransom demand?’
    ‘Not necessarily right away. The timing would have to be right.’
    ‘And in the meantime?’
    ‘We continue to treat this as a missing persons and talk to the people who really know what Yasmin is thinking. ’
     
    In terms of location there could hardly have been a greater contrast between the small Islamic school and the girls high school that Yasmin attended. On the Granville Lane patch, it was more familiar to Mariner. Purpose built in the mid 1930s the red-brick building nestled snugly in leafy suburbia, surrounded by acres of what at any other time of year would have been lush green grass, but which had by now been scorched to a crusty, brownish yellow by the relentless sun.
    Here Mariner really was glad of Millie’s presence. Pre-adolescent girls had ceased to be one of his areas of expertise for going on for thirty years. In addition, these were likely to be worried adolescent girls, given that one of their friends had disappeared. The meeting with Yasmin’s closest friends was to be supervised by the head of pastoral care but, even so, Mariner felt a certain apprehension as, in the middle of the afternoon, he and Millie drove slowly along the winding, tree-lined drive.
    They were a little early, so were invited to take a seat in the reception area to wait.
    With its coffee-table reading and lush green pot plants it was more like the lobby of a private corporation, though it lacked the comfort of air conditioning. The power of the connection between aroma and memory never failed to amaze Mariner, and the combined old-school smell of cleaning fluids and cooked food was one of the most potent of all. His lightweight suit felt suddenly constrictive as he made a conscious effort not to let his own experiences affect his perceptions. His own schooldays had been far from the happiest of his life when he’d been a square peg in a round hole at the boys grammar school he’d attended.
    Nearly six feet tall by the age of thirteen, he’d stood out, literally at first, and then socially too, when people had gradually discovered that his was a single-parent family. Lone parents back then were still a relative rarity, and amongst his particular strand of lower-middle-class population were virtually unheard of. Throw into the